Analysis On Verbal Humor In Chinese Cross Talk From The Perspective Of Schema Theory

Cross talk is a traditional Chinese art form, whose history has lasted over onehundred years. As a performing art form people love to see and hear very much in ourcountry, cross talk has many spectators, creators and performers in strength. In recentyears, cross talk actor Guo Degang and the establishment of De Yun community spark asensation on cross talk appreciation. As early as in1961, Wang Jingshou published "Oncross talk language" which can be seen as the first cross talk language researchmonographs. Later, domestic scholars set out to research the verbal humor in cross talk,including rhetorical devices, the construction of clothes wrappers, cooperative principle,polite theory, relevance theory, and blend tniu heory etc. However, it has not been givensufficient attention to resolve the verbal humor from the perspective of schema theory.Schema theory emphasizes the concept of knowledge resources. It points out thatinterpretation of discourse needs to activate relevant schemata in memory in order topredict, infer and parse the meaning of discourse. This thesis will make a qualitativelydetailed analysis of verbal humor of selected samples to see the features of the linguisticschemata, formal schemata, content schemata and pragmatic schemata from thecognitive perspective. It aims to help the audiences better comprehend the verbal humorin cross talk.The corpora of this study are the scripts partly from Traditional Cross talkcollection, Hou Baoming and his Cross talk collection, Jiang Kun’s Cross talkcollections, and partly from the network and cross talk watching. Under the guidance ofschema theory, this research classifies and analyzes the schemata characteristics ofselected episodes, and attempts to interpret humor mechanism from the cognitiveperspective. The main research questions include three aspects:(1) What is therelationship between the interpretation of verbal humor in Chinese cross talk andschema theory?(2) What are the schemata characteristics of verbal humor in Chinesecross talk?(3) What are the basic strategies for the interpretation of verbal humor in Chinese cross talk according to the different schemata characteristics analyzed in thisthesis?By analyzing the selected samples, the research has found out that verbal humorinterpretation in Chinese cross talk requires audiences to activate relative linguisticschemata, formal schemata, content schemata and pragmatic schemata. These schematalargely aid audiences to comprehend the verbal humor in cross talk. The inputinformation of "clothes wrappers" must match with related schemata to complete aseries of information processing. Lastly, the thesis proposes several strategies andmethods for better understanding the humor in cross talk, including prediction strategy,selection strategy, relevance strategy, and inference strategy. What’s more, in order tobetter understand the verbal humor in cross talk, audiences should extend socialbackground knowledge to reduce the listening obstacles caused by the lack of culturalcontent schemata. These strategies and methods can help audiences, especiallyforeigners who like Chinese culture, to improve their comprehension.